On October 8 Danish police announced divers had recovered the decapitated head and the legs of Ms Wall.

In a grisly case worthy of a Nordic noir thriller, Copenhagen police inspector Jens Moller Jensen told reporters that divers had found bags containing her missing clothes, her head and legs in Koge Bay, south of the Danish capital.

Jensen said the decapitated head contradicted Madsen's version of events. There was "no sign of fracture on the skull and there isn't any sign of other blunt violence to the skull," he said, citing an autopsy carried out on Ms Wall's body.

Locating Wall's head was a priority for investigators, as the final autopsy on the torso was not able to establish the cause of death.

However, it did show multiple mutilation wounds to Wall's genitalia.

Prosecutors believe Madsen killed 30-year-old Wall as part of a sexual fantasy, then dismembered and mutilated her body.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen told a court custody hearing that a hard disk found in Madsen's workshop contained fetish films in which real women were tortured, decapitated and burned.